Hillary Clinton broke through the burden of a polarizing past, only to hit another wall

The Associated Press

Published: May 11, 2008

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WASHINGTON: Hillary Rodham Clinton began her presidential quest armed with talent, tenacity, fame, money, connections and a team that knew how to win.

Many people believed her victory in the Democratic nomination race was a sure thing. Her ultimate failing may have been in believing it, too.

Clinton had one big problem out of the gate: 40 percent or more of Americans said they would never vote for her. She was too polarizing. It is love her or hate her.

Clinton powered through that hurdle in state after state, showing grit that earned her the valuable political currency of being merely admired.

White men, working-class voters, socially conservative Democrats — however you slice the electorate, she brought many of those people to her side, over time, and took the edge off the Hillary haters.

Voters, whose No. 1 concern had been ending the Iraq war, started worrying more about the economy. That was a switch from rival Barack Obama's strength to hers.

Despite all that, her campaign is on the ropes. Clinton is fighting on for a prize few believe she can win anymore, barring some game-changing development.

Clinton's fortunes rose and fell like a fever chart: She was down in Iowa, up in New Hampshire, down in South Carolina. Then, after a roughly even finish with Obama in the 23 contests on Feb. 5, Super Tuesday, she suffered a string of 11 unanswered losses that, almost before Clinton noticed, put Obama so far ahead in the delegate hunt that all the big-state victories she piled up could not close the delegate gap.

Clinton once said she is the most famous person no one knows, meaning Americans do not really get her.

Sixteen months after she opened her campaign sitting on a couch in a cozy online video, it is questionable whether people ever discovered the authentic Clinton.

Is she the whiskey-downing pit bull of Indiana? The near-tears softy of New Hampshire?

The technocrat of health care reform or the populist who dismisses economic policy experts as out-of-touch elitists?

"They know that I can make decisions," she said in New Hampshire, "but I also want them to know I'm a real person."

Even many of the New York senator's supporters thought she would say anything to win, or be anyone.

These are some of the paradoxes and missed opportunities that will be examined by the cottage industry sure to arise to explore the what-ifs of Clinton's campaign.

By now, it is common knowledge that she planned to wrap up the nomination in early February. It was a reasonable assumption in 2007 but there was not much of an alternative Plan B when that did not work out in 2008.

"Her inevitability was based on a concept that no one would have the gumption or the resources or drive to get in — anyone with serious chances," Dick Harpootlian, a former South Carolina Democratic chairman and Barack Obama supporter, said after her Super Tuesday strategy fell short.

"They had an inevitability strategy, which was sort of a political Maginot line. It was illusionary. You just went around it, and, you know, Barack Obama did that."

David Gergen, a senior adviser to a succession of presidents from both parties, thought she was not well served by her team, citing "elements of malpractice in this campaign."

Any failed campaign is a combination of what the fallen did wrong, what the victor did right and happenstance.

Did her loose cannon of a husband, former President Bill Clinton, shoot a hole through their own hull?

Did Florida and Michigan help to blow it for her in their rogue rush to hold early primaries against party rules, a move that sidelined delegates from two big states open to her?

Questions like that go into the same file with Ralph Nader-2000. Pundits will chew them over without ever being able to prove the answer, just as no one knows for sure whether Nader's candidacy robbed Al Gore of the presidency in the 2000 presidential election.

Clinton was on a springtime roll until last Tuesday, when she lost big in North Carolina and barely prevailed in Indiana. Obama has swallowed several worse days than that and cruised on.

It loomed so large for Clinton because she had fallen so far behind in the contests of winter. One of the striking features of the drawn-out Democratic race is that so much damage was done to her chances in such a short spell.

After Obama's big win in the leadoff Iowa caucuses, a reporter asked Clinton as she campaigned in New Hampshire whether she felt Obama was a phenomenon that she just could not overcome, no matter what she did.